I am about to start my final year university project in product design and I have to design a product (could be innovative, creative or just improve an existing product)
my product idea is to design a charger for a mobile phone, where the charger can eject itself automatically when the mobile phone has charged 100%, in this case, electricity will be saved and also the capacitors on the phone will not be overstored/damaged
My idea is to use an arduino to program servos that rotate 'flaps' when triggered, the rotation of the 'flaps' will produce a linear movement between the charger and the phone thus an ejection can be carried out.
All measurement are yet to be drawn, for prototyping; 3d printing is most likely going to be used to design accurate details to place components firmly,
The difficulty I am facing is, I do not know how to communicate an arduino to a mobile, where the arduino can get messages/signal/data about charge stored in mobiles (specifically apple iphones) and when can the arduino know that the phone has reached 100% charge?
What needs to be unplugged to save energy is the wall wart if that's what is being used to charge the phone.
As for your premise that the phone staying plugged in at 100% is going to damage it, how have you gone around to proving that in the first place?
Before you can solve a problem, it has to be a problem.
most electronics, when left to be charged after they are fully charged gradually losses its battery life
lithium-ion batteries don’t overcharge, and instead will “trickle charge.” This happens when the battery reaches 100% and the charger vastly slows down the voltage that it sends to your iPhone, just enough to keep it charged up without overcharging.
More specifically what happens is that the whole time you have your iPhone plugged in and it’s at 100%, it’s really going from 100% to 99% or even 98% and then back up to 100% many times over until you finally unplug it, hence the name “trickle charging.”
Again this method will result in power wastage
I think my idea is more reasonable as its a 2 way advantage; one, when it reaches 100% automatic ejection can save power (during trickle charging) and, two, saving a battery from getting overcharged, leading to a rise in temperature which can lead to a bloat and thus damaging the battery
Still have to draw all the calculations and tests to find out how much power is being used etc
But, what am unsure of is what components/software to use in order for the arduino to be able to communicate with the phone (i.e how can the arduino get signals/messages from the phone about the charge level)
The protection circuit in the phones isn't going to use much at all, as for saving the capacitors etc. at that point you are talking numbers really small, as a previous person said running an arduino or any controller of any kind is going to use way more power not to mention whatever you use to unplug it in the first place.
The benefit on the hardware itself, well, there will not be any benifit to measure. It will be pointless trying to write a dissertation on this subject as there is just too much research that has made that this no longer an issue.
Depends on the phone. This is more suitable for an Android forum or an IOS forum, on how to get the battery level information from software.
If you plan on redundantly reading the battery voltage level, then you really need to know which phone you're working with.
And how do you imagine communicating with an Arduino if the usb port is busy with charging? Power draining bluetooth maybe?
Paul is correct- your device will waste much more power than leaving a phone plugged in.
Thanks a lot everybody for the help, I think this topic is a bit too dusted and complicated, however I will still continue doing research and lets see what happen.
(i.e how can the arduino get signals/messages from the phone about the charge level)